Between April 8th and 12th, 2024, associate professors Yuriy Velykoroda and Nataliya Gontarenko visited the Directorate-General for Logistics and Interpretation for Conferences (DG LINC) of the European Parliament.
This visit marks a significant milestone in the ongoing project “Capacity Building for Post-Graduate Conference Interpreters’ Training at PNU – 2023-2024”, funded by the European Parliament and aimed at establishing a pool of qualified interpreters in Ukraine in anticipation of its accession to the EU. The project is being conducted at the Department of English Philology by the faculty members who are practicing conference interpreting.
During their stay in Brussels, Yuriy Velykoroda and Nataliya Gontarenko learned how the European Parliament bolsters interpreter training across Europe in general and how it fosters cooperation with the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in this realm. They met with Agnieszka Walter-Drop (Director-General), Alison Graves (Director for Interpretation), Cathy Pearson (Head of the Multilingualism and Succession Planning Unit), Margarita Blanco (responsible for grants in the Multilingualism and Succession Planning Unit), as well as Ambassador Vsevolod Chentsov (Head of Mission of Ukraine to the European Union), among others. The study visit provided an invaluable opportunity to look behind the scenes of the services such as freelance interpreter recruitment, programming, and technical support, which facilitate interpretation in the Parliament’s official 24 languages. In addition to these insights, participants had the opportunity to observe parliamentary sessions and engage in simulated interpretation in a training booth, explored the House of European History, and deepened their understanding of the intricate processes involved in nurturing the next generation of interpreters.